175 years of history

Georgetown, Ole Miss, Furman, Yale and Clemson are neighborhood streets in a community that evolved from an ambitious, albeit unsuccessful, plan to build a major university in north Kenner.

The streets and the main thoroughfare are miles away from the nearest institution of higher learning, but it was not meant to be that way.

In 1960, New Orleans philanthropist J. Edgar Monroe donated $1 million to Loyola University to buy 500 acres of wilderness in what was then the boondocks of the region. At the time, Loyola was in need of space to expand its Uptown campus, and a movement was launched to build a new, larger Loyola University on the north Kenner land.

Proponents of the plan worked out a tentative agreement to sell approximately 17 acres of Loyola’s St. Charles Avenue campus to neighboring Tulane University for $10.6 million. Loyola would have maintained ownership of the Holy Name of Jesus Church and the adjacent horseshoe and garden.

Meanwhile, in Kenner, real estate speculators began buying up land around the 500-acre tract, and streets named after various universities were cut. Developers envisioned an exclusive college community rising around a new campus. Plans were announced for a beautification project along Lake Pontchartrain with golf courses and other attractions that would tie in with the new university.

But the drive to move Loyola eventually lost steam, and the university’s board of trustees ultimately decided to keep the campus in Uptown New Orleans.

The university-named streets were filled with modest tract homes, and the area became known as University City.

Loyola maintained ownership of its land in north Kenner until the late 1970s, when it began to sell off portions of it. The Audubon subdivision and St. Jude Medical Center, now Ochsner, were among the first developments on what was to be the site of Loyola University. During the next few decades, most of the remainder of the tract was developed.